Archive for January, 2011

In his recent article in Investor’s Business Daily, “Uncertainty Continues To Depress Jobs,” Robert Higgs (Senior Fellow, The Independent Institute) discusses how the U.S. government’s interventionist and spending policies are prolonging high unemployment by creating a climate of massive economic uncertainty: President Obama, in his State of the Union address, promised to focus on…Read More »

The latest economic forecasts are now projecting that the federal budget deficit will reach a record of nearly $1.5 trillion in 2011. As the Wall Street Journal reports, this “grim outlook landed a day after President Barack Obama outlined plans to push for new spending that he said would help keep the U.S. globally…Read More »

If you want to quickly see how President Barack Obama and the Congressional Democrats’ federal government spending proposal for 2011 stacks up against what Congressional Republicans have in mind, shown against a background illustrating the trend in U.S. federal government spending since 1967, here you go! References 1 Obama, Barack. The State of the…Read More »

In a characteristically informed and appropriately scathing attack on the welfare state, Walter Williams asserts a cautiously optimistic view of the recent trend in political discourse as it has become more popular to call for limits on the arbitrary powers of the state. “For the first time in my lifetime—and I’m approaching 75 years…Read More »

Former Congressional Budget Office (CBO) officials Douglas Holtz-Eakin (Director), Joseph Antos (Assistant Director) and James Capretta (Associate Director) show in a new Wall Street Journal article, “Health Care Repeal Won’t Add to the Deficit,” that repealing Obamacare (“Affordable Care Act” or ACA) will not increase the federal deficit. In so doing, they refute the…Read More »

Yesterday The New York Times published the results of a poll on how to cut the national deficit. Interestingly, a majority of people think necessary action is needed, the deficit can be reduced without increasing taxes, and it is necessary to cut back on programs they benefit from. Cause for optimism? I think not….Read More »

In a January 19th article in the Wall Street Journal, “What Congress Should Cut,” former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey and FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe propose abolishing “the Departments of Commerce and Housing and Urban Development, end farm subsidies, and end urban mass transit grants, for starters.” The primary economic challenge today is…Read More »

Independent Institute Senior Fellow Richard K. Vedder, a member of the Council of Economic Advisors for the Institute’s Government Cost Calculator, was interviewed by International PressTV on January 12th. In the interview, Dr. Vedder explains that President Obama has done nothing to rectify either the U.S. or international debt crisis. Indeed, under the Obama…Read More »

The answer is illustrated below: The United States’ total public debt outstanding was approximately $13.562 trillion at the end of the government’s fiscal year on 30 September 2010. As of 4 January 2011, the United States’ total public debt outstanding exceeds 14 trillion dollars. Despite that near half-billion dollar increase, the percentage composition of…Read More »

Dr. Emily Skarbek, director of the Government Cost Calculator at the Independent Institute, was interviewed by International PressTV on Friday, January 14th. Listen to Emily as she explains the government’s three options on this gigantic debt crisis: pay the debt, maintain it, or repudiate it. The article and video can be viewed here.